I'm not sure we have any shot at competing with Utah's (inadvertent?) tanking efforts. 0-6 and already losing to Toronto by 23 with only 4 minutes gone in the second quarter. They're last in the league in offense, with an astonishingly low team expected field goal percentage of .422, though some of that is Favors and Jefferson's awful starts.

There hasn’t been a player shoot > 53% off the dribble in the 8 years I can find data for. There have only been a dozen or so to shoot over 50%.

He’s also shooting 66.7% at the rim, compared to 40.9% last year. That’s helped somewhat by him getting 2x as many transition opportunities as he did last year, but much higher when just looking at half-court attempts as well.

I think Kyrie is leaps and bounds better than our best player (Thad?), and I certainly don't think our next seven best players in any way make up for the gap in top-tier talent. Comparing Kyrie to Thad muddles things, so let's just go position by position. Kyrie has a huge edge over MCW. The line he put up tonight, 39, 12, and 5, has been put up in the last 30 years by only one player younger than Irving, LeBron James. Irving may be the best point guard in the conference right now, and not just by default of Rondo's injury. Turner and Waiters are still both talented messes, with Turner being a bit less of a mess and Waiters having more talent. I'll give an edge to Turner mainly because the shots are going in right now and he's not quite as out of control. Varejao's still a better player than Hawes, he defends the pick and roll, makes small but useful contributions on offense, and does things big men are supposed to do. Thompson's like a poor man's Thad, roughly speaking; big but not gigantic advantage to the Sixers there. Gee and Anderson are marginal players, but Gee is better on the defensive side of the ball than Anderson is on offense. Jack's one of the league's best bench guards and Wroten is a speedy, combustible mess, who I like, but still. C.J. Miles is something we don't even have on this team, an athletic shooter who can defend. He's significantly better than Anderson, and he doesn't start. I don't know who to compare the #1 pick in the 2013 draft to - Brandon Davies? I guess Bennett takes that. Lavoy might be a little better than Tyler Zeller. Earl Clark didn't play tonight but he's another thing the Sixers don't have, a big man with ball skills who belongs in the NBA off the bench. I kind of like our young backup center, though, more so than anyone the Cavs have in that role. Overall, they have about two more actual NBA players on their bench than we do, a vastly better sixth man, and a significantly more talented starting unit. All of which is ever so unsurprising, as Dan Gilbert wants his team to make the playoffs and Josh Harris wants us to miss the playoffs by a larger margin than any other team in the league.

I would be seriously surprised if Melo actually went elsewhere so he can win and turns down all those money in a new Knicks deal. The 4th contract max contracts are huge. That's a terrible contract waiting to happen and we all know the Knicks will offer it.

Anyone else catch the end of the OKC/Wiz? Beal was unconscious, but Durant hit a clutch 3 to send it to OT. The Wiz could have won if they knew how, but it was very apparent which of the two teams was used to winning close games.

Suns 5-2 have not gotten nearly the anti-tanking hype the Sixers have. The Jazz are currently the run away tankers- hearkening back to 2005 when the won 26 games and the rights to draft DWill (although I'm sure there are people who will say "Utah never tanks"- although they did (unbelievably) draft Stockton and Malone with the 16th and 13th picks in after consecutive mediocre seasons.)

1. It is highly unlikely that MCW ever produced for even one season like he has in his first 7 games (unless he goes on to be a HOF caliber player.)

2. Michael Ray Richardson had a truly historic season 2 years prior to being banned for life for cocaine use (20/8.2/5.6/3st.) He also was a unique player- no one else has come close to his career averages of 14.8/7/5.5/2.6st. No one else since '73 was even 14/6/5/2, Walt Frazier, Magic and Wade and Lebron are sort of close, but all 1 st/g behind.

If Jeremy Lin could average what he did over a month or so (which was basically his first month of real nba play), he'd be a first-ballot Hall of Famer, right? I think a lot of what he's doing may be sustainable, but the scoring and rebounding would drop considerably on a team with more scoring and rebounding.

A fair question, though, is what it all means. Until the tail end of his career, Marbury was the only player besides Oscar Robertson to average 20 and 8 for his career. And even with the years where he did nothing in the mix, he still left the NBA averaging 19 and 7.6. I think the analytic jury is still out, but Marbury didn't appear to make his teams a whole lot better than they would have been without him. And in fact, he might have helped them a lot more had he scored less. Likewise, I'm not too sure what the value of high steal numbers is, or high offensive rebounding, or high scoring at the point depending on how it's done, or even a high assist rate, which may speak to usage and ball dominance nearly as much as it does to how good a passer a player is.